The present invention relates to a carriage on which a recording head is mounted, and a recording apparatus and a liquid ejection apparatus including its carriage.
In an ink jet printer or a thermal transfer type printer that is a kind of recording apparatus, a carriage on which a recording head is mounted is reciprocated in a direction orthogonal to the transporting direction of paper that is a recording medium (in a main scanning direction), whereby recording is performed. When forced vibration caused by cogging of a carriage motor is applied to this carriage, the recording head also vibrates, so that a good recording result is not obtained. Therefore, a printer has been proposed in which a small vibrator (dynamic vibration absorber) comprising a rubber elastic body and a dead-weight is attached to the carriage thereby to select and perform damping the resonance frequency of the carriage (JP-A-10-337924).
As described above, a small vibrator attached to a carriage of a conventional printer comprises a rubber elastic body and a dead-weight. Since a spring constant of this rubber elastic body is generally easy to change according to environment or with time, it is difficult to match exactly natural frequency of the small vibrator determined by spring constant of the rubber elastic body and mass of the dead-weight with natural frequency of the carriage over a long term, so that removal of the vibration of the carriage becomes incomplete.
Further, in order to prevent vibration transmission to the carriage, it is necessary to set the spring constant of the rubber elastic body low. However, in this case, deflection level of the small vibrator in acceleration and deceleration of the carriage increases, and position control property of the carriage worsens.
Further, in case that an effective working portion of the small vibrator is different according to carriages, a maximum vibro-isolating effect cannot be obtained in the respective carriages, using a single type small vibrator.